O'HARE ASIDE, IT'S A DILLY OF A DIN;CITY, SUBURBS SHOUTING OVER NOISE MONITORS

What's louder than a 737 making a final runway approach? The political bickering over noise at O'Hare International Airport.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley pushed the din up a few decibels last month when he ruled out extending an expired ban on a new runway-a maneuver that galled expansion opponents such as Bensenville Village President John Geils.

"Somewhere, you have to draw a line in the sand," says Mr. Geils, chairman of the Suburban O'Hare Commission (SOC), which has complained about airport noise for years.

The line has widened into a great divide, with emotions running so high, it's tough to imagine the two sides finding common ground. As in all disputes, a resolution would require compromise-perhaps submitting to some form of mediation on objective standards for noise measurement.

For now, the two sides aren't even talking-they're shouting past one another.

"(The SOC) speaks pretty loudly," concedes Gov. Jim Edgar, who champions a third regional airport. "Sometimes, it's hard to measure how much depth there is based on volume."

Mr. Geils and his group are suspicious of the city's latest efforts to mollify them: a program that includes installing noise monitors in communities surrounding O'Hare.

That involves the communities' permission to attach microphones to utility poles to transmit noise data to an airport computer controlled by O'Hare.

Seven communities okayed the installations earlier this fall, but Bensenville balked. Mr. Geils says the city didn't follow proper guidelines for obtaining a permit. "We have rules and procedures to follow," he says.

Mr. Geils says Bensenville has issued a go-ahead for the permits after all, but it's clear that some suburbs aren't finished using the noise monitors for an alternative purpose: to give the city a hard time.

Des Plaines last month thought better of its cooperation. After granting a permit weeks earlier, Des Plaines officials sent a letter to Chicago officials saying the installation required a special license after all.

"I don't know if they will be reliable," he says, quickly offering his solution: a third airport. "There's no other way," he declares.

The third airport, of course, is the larger agenda for some suburbanites-the only way, they reason, to assure that future O'Hare expansion won't raise noise levels even higher.

City and business groups worry about damaging the economic engine of O'Hare. And not all suburban mayors share Mr. Geils' mistrust of the city's intentions.

"Anyone who lives here knows the airport is here-it provides the economic stability of the region," says Reid Paxson, mayor of west suburban Northlake. "Every time a plane flies overhead, that's 1,000 or 2,000 jobs, dinner in someone's kitchen."

Chicago wants to include sympathetic communities like Northlake on a commission to oversee the spending of city funds for noise reduction. Mr. Geils complains that the city is stacking the deck.

"They say Northlake shouldn't be on the noise commission because it's not a vocal opponent," huffs Chicago Department of Aviation Commissioner David R. Mosena.

Local business people, many of whom depend on the airport, merely shrug.

"It's more quiet inside my shop with the machinery than outside," quips Jesse Soszko, president of Addison Manufacturing Co. in Bensenville. "But the noise doesn't bother us. It's part of life."

But business owners acknowledge that the noise may be troublesome for homeowners.

"We don't sleep there at night," says Bernadette Ryan, vice-president of marketing for Suburban Job-Link Corp., a non-profit employment agency with a Bensenville office. "It's a difficult thing for the residents."

Uncertainty over future noise levels could be the key to settling the dispute, suggests Leigh Thompson, a professor of organizational behavior at Northwestern University's J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

Will expansion add to future noise? Chicago could offer to pay remuneration if the noise turns out to be worse than expected.

"Each side bets on what the future looks like, and the citizens get an insurance premium," says Ms. Thompson.

But since there's no immediate pressure on either side to work things out, name-calling continues. Chicago officials are miffed that Bensenville didn't jump to embrace a program that they say will improve residents' quality of life.

"If some people's political agendas have a problem with that, it's too bad," scoffs Chicago's Mr. Mosena. But absent a ban on runway expansion, the city's noise-monitoring plan appears to suburban leaders to be disingenuous at best.

For now, the two sides are wrangling over how to evaluate the noise data. SOC attorney Joe Karaganis says there's been no agreement on which outside experts will review the data.